“Spring Break” at 4CP: Go for the Laughs, Stay for the Life Lessons

“Spring Break” by Joe Calarco opened with a world premiere performance Friday, Feb. 3, in the Four County Players Cellar. The show is a Teen Arts Project (TAP) production. (Photo Credit: Linda Hogan Photography)

The verdict is in for the world premiere of Joe Calarco’s newest teen dramedy, and the kids are more than alright—they’re phenomenal.

“Spring Break,” written by Calarco and directed by Soren Corbett, opened Friday, Feb. 3, at Four County Players. The show is the sequel to Calarco’s “Winter Break” but stands up well on its own, so don’t worry about being able to follow along.

The story follows a group of teenagers as they navigate life’s ups and downs over the first few hours of spring break. Relationships are built and lost, paths diverge and assumptions are challenged as the characters reassess themselves and their futures.

The acting by the cast of young thespians was phenomenal across the board. Acting in a newer play can present a special challenge for character development since there aren’t other past performances to learn from or emulate. In this case, the ensemble rose to the challenge and turned it into an opportunity, creating characters that felt believable and fully developed.  It’s hard to pick a standout with such a solid cast, but Charles Sokolowski brought a particularly endearing earnestness to his role as Brett.

Calarco successfully pulled off a delicate balance in terms of scriptwriting, addressing complex universal themes without the characters losing their authenticity as teenagers. Sports, video games and chocolate Frosties are interwoven with explorations of topics like loneliness, perception and projection, and yet the juxtaposition never seems forced.

In particular, the casual speaking style of the teens somehow seems to make these often complicated issues more accessible, even for us adults. Case in point: during one particularly poignant scene, a character beautifully breaks down the concept of how one’s own shame or discomfort can end up impacting the way they treat others:

“You just kind of can’t deal, not because you’re uncomfortable with them, but because you’re uncomfortable with yourself for how you dealt with it, or didn’t deal with it in the first place.”

The show is deep without being heavy-handed, preachy or depressing, and deeply funny when it intends to be. Characters aren’t good or bad—they’re like most real people, living somewhere in the space in between and figuring things out as they go. Flashes of self-awareness are interspersed with the emotional outbursts that make us human. It seems to be no coincidence that Calarco references “A Tale of Two Cities,” with its own use of duality and contrasting characters, in the play’s opening scene.

Set design was minimalistic and allowed the focus to remain on the characters’ relationships and inner lives, rather than their outer surroundings. Using the more intimate Cellar rather than the larger Mainstage of the theater was exactly the right choice for the introspective, character-driven work.

Unsurprisingly, “Spring Break” is currently sold out, but fingers crossed for another installment in this thought-provoking series—after all, there are still two more seasons for Calarco to cover.

Four County Players is central Virginia’s longest continuously operating community theater. To learn about upcoming shows, visit www.fourcp.org or call the box office at (540) 832-5355.